


How To Fill the Spaces.

by DitescoMori



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 16:10:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4269666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DitescoMori/pseuds/DitescoMori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lunches and dinners are not any better, but that does not mean Bucky is not observing. He has taken to the key analysis of the man before him. With a trained eye, seasoned by countless marks he has been forced to take down, Bucky looks at the man before him every single time. He is no longer his mission, and with knuckles no longer marred and caked on his blood, he can see beyond the façade. They all love him. The way they love an ideal, the way legends are designed to be loved. He is everything and nothing to all of them. A friend, a partner, someone they can trust and rely on.</p>
<p>But for him, it is not enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Fill the Spaces.

Rain hardly seems to stop nowadays in New York, as if it was a parable, a never-ending competition against the threats (man-made or not) that ravage the city every other month. Overcast skies are part of the panorama, simulations of smoke that creeps in between the unconquered spaces of its mighty skyscrapers. The argent slithers and clogs the blue of its skies, ushers clouds out of its way, and allows the penumbra to settle. The sight is no different from the sediments of dirty ashtrays, full of the vices of a city that has long given its hopes of acquittal.

He shows up one day at his doorstep with penitence and exhaustion in his eyes. But Steve does not question it. The urgency of a long-awaited reunion paused only by the need of a shower and a new set of clothing, as they both, eventually, sit down in the small living room. He explains at length the necessity of his journey to Europe– _‘vendetta, so to speak. I just needed to lay low, to find whatever I could about my past, about the people that did this to me_ (there is a pause as he falters, lips agape and the slight crooking of his head sideways before his lips close again, and Steve could swear he was about to say **us** before he reconsidered). _I am not proud of the things I did, but I don’t regret them, either.’_

There is no judgment in Steve’s eyes that night, but a wisp of self-torment that overcasts the gentleness of his eyes. For that moment, his eyes resemble the color of New York’s skies, both equally helpless, hopeless. He presses a warm hand against the cold metal of his friend’s arm as the name falls like a pound of iron in the living room, “Bucky…”

“I am not him, you know? Don’t call me that,” Bucky reads the undeniable hurt in Steve’s eyes, as he pulls away from the offered hand. “Not yet, anyway,” he throws back as an offering: demure, scant, but it is all he can offer right now.

Steve offers his bed, but Bucky refuses it. After all, it has been years since he last slept on one. He can do without one tonight.

The consecutive days are not any better.

They fill the silences of their breakfasts with the rustle of page-turning from the newspapers, the idle clatter of silverware as they finish up the scrambled eggs Steve diligently prepares every morning after his run. Bucky knows Steve observes him whenever he turns the pages to browse the sports section, a look in askance, the casual rub of his chin against his own shoulder. The way his mouth unhinges for a moment before reconsidering. Half of the time Bucky wishes he could just say what is on his mind. It would be far an easier task than trying to read the expression lines of his forehead, or think if there is an ulterior motive behind the crinkles at his lips.

His team lost again. But Bucky knows the evident frustration on his Steve’s face has nothing to do with it.

The afternoons are peculiar, one detail out of key always bringing singularity to their motions. They read more than the talk, but even when there are no words to accompany the flow of notes that deluge into the living room, Bucky learns. He learns about the soldier that still has war in his eyes and in his dreams as Hemingway’s novels leave the smell of ink and old paper on his fingertips, a smell Bucky recognizes when hours later they sit opposite from each other at dinner. He can almost see one by one, how his heartstrings become frayed by Joyce’s narrative of Ulysses. The first thing that breaks the paradigm is a song they both know: Steve hums it, and Bucky drums the notes against the armrest of the couch. The last song they heard together in the contingency of a foiled plan to go on a double-date together–- _‘You listen to me, Steve. When all this is over? (The Great Depression, the war, the hunger) We will never have to worry about food, living, or anything like that. He is still unsure of what he aspires to be, but the constant is the same: someone good enough for them. Someone that will provide enough for Steve so he won’t have to worry about anything anymore._ The second is surreptitious, just in the way one tells their secrets: in a soft, quiet voice for the other’s ears only. Steve is half-way through the anecdote of the time Bucky chose him first over the rest of the class to play baseball. _‘You were ten and the hems of your pants had as much dirt as your nails. You weren’t smiling, but you had this face. I knew that maybe we would not win, but we would have so much while playing’._

Lunches and dinners are not any better, but that does not mean Bucky is not observing. He has taken to the key analysis of the man before him. With a trained eye, seasoned by countless marks he has been forced to take down, Bucky looks at the man before him every single time. He is no longer his mission, and with knuckles no longer marred and caked on his blood, he can see beyond the façade. They all love him. The way they love an ideal, the way legends are designed to be loved. He is everything and nothing to all of them. A friend, a partner, someone they can trust and rely on. But for him, it is not enough.

The silence and spaces in the apartment, he knows, are more than emptiness, more than the lack of furniture and objects taking up space. They are the voids where circumventing words are supposed to exist. He stares at those spaces, too. He is a soldier that has come back home from the war and the savagery, but just like those spaces, he struggles with knowing just which part he occupies.

Slowly, he decides to change his tactics.

Dawn is in its last stretch of charcoal darkness by the time Steve is up. Bucky registers the quiet protest of the wooden floorboard as he is finishes tying up his shoelaces, the last tier before Steve is off in his usual morning run. He gets up five minutes earlier and they are out the door together. They don’t say anything, but they run together. Just when they punched Billy Jones, three years their senior, and swore he would give them back the bloody nose and lacerated lip they left him with; just when they used to evade bullets in the battlefield. It is almost a symbiotic design:

When they return to the apartment, they make breakfast together. The usual silent procession is shattered by small, inconsequential conversation. The weather, the leaking faucet. But it is simple. And it is the most eloquent subterfuge they find to substitute the rustle of the newspaper, the sipping of hot coffee.

Later that afternoon, when Steve is sitting by himself in the living room, Bucky sets down on his lap a new pair of boxing gloves. Before the quizzical look fully registers on his face, the russet-haired man is already explaining, “I heard you like boxing.”

“On occasions,” he grabs the pair of gloves and lets his thumb run on top of the smooth leather, a small tugging the left corner of his lips, “Depends on who I am fighting.”

Bucky snorts, already gliding his hands into another set of gloves, “Oh, really?” He throws his left shoulder backwards, gesticulating to the television behind them. “Judging from those videos I have been watching of you and your friends, _that_ right hook isn’t an original move of yours.”

“You couldn’t throw a proper right hook even if your life depended on it, Buck.”

“Words, Steve, and no action. Is this what you have been doin’ all this time? Is this how you got to lead a team of your own?”

Steve doesn’t reply, but gets up instead. He leads the way to a small accommodated space in his apartment, loitered by training mats and scattered weights. He is quick on his feet and the first punch he throws is a mere taunt, one that Bucky counters with cocky laughter and an equal, yet more assertive blow. It isn’t a fight. It isn’t a competition. It is a solemn and quiet procession between two. For each blow Bucky throws forward, he seems to leave behind a piece of the past. The ritual is devoid of the grittiness and rawness of their last encounter in the Helicarrier. It is a dance, a cadence. Where Steve retreats, Bucky advances. It is complementary, like water filling up the spaces.

And when they are almost out of breath and exhausted, Bucky lances an arm around Steve, playfully hitting his chin, “Happy birthday, punk.”

Steve laughs, plainly and loud, nudging his friend’s side. The gloves are, without a doubt, appreciated, but they are the last thing he is thinking about right now, “Thank you, jerk.”

This time, Bucky joins in the laughter, and the sound is enough to fill the emptiness of the apartment.


End file.
